Generally, computers and beverages don't mix well. If you spill a beer or a soft drink on your computer, you may be kissing your rig goodbye. I am sure that many people (myself included) are perfectly willing to risk killing their computer in an effort to partake in their favorite frosty beverage while they play some computer games.

One geek has taken his love of beer and computers and used the two things to create an epic casemod that all you beer fans will love. The dude took an old Anheuser-Busch keg and cut it open with various windows and ports to be able to cram his computer hardware inside and keep the stuff running cool. The finished case was powder coated in black and then trimmed in chrome.

The case looks great and has a functional bottle opener on the side. One reader suggested it be filled with mineral oil so it would look like it still had beer. That would be cool, but from the pics I see this thing is far from watertight.

Dell has been talking up its interesting convertible notebook called the Inspiron Duo for a while now. The machine isn't like your typical convertible netbook where the entire LCD rotates around for tablet mode on a hinge. The screen of the Duo is attached to a pivot in the middle for the frame allowing it to flip around as needed.

The Inspiron Duo is on the Microsoft Store online for pre-order right now. The machine will cost you $549 for the netbook only and you can add Signature Premium to it for an additional $99. Signature Premium service is an entire year of VIP tech support and LoJack for laptops.

The machine uses a 10.1-inch LED backlit screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768. The CPU in the netbook is an Atom N550 at 1.5GHz and it has 2GB of RAM. The HDD inside the netbook is 320GB and the OS is Windows 7 Home Premium. Like most netbooks, the Duo lacks an optical drive. It has a battery good for four hours and packs in Bluetooth and WiFi among other things.

FinalWare Ltd has today announced it has acquired Lavalys EVEREST - whom own the diagnostics, hardware monitoring, network audit and benchmark software that is used by many around the world.

"Today is a significant step forward in our progress to deliver a class-leading diagnostics and benchmarking solution," said Tamas Miklos, managing director of FinalWire. "The addition of Lavalys' customers and technologies will enable us to accelerate investments, meet a wider set of customer needs through a richer solution set, increase efficiencies and significantly expand our opportunities for growth."

Beginning immediately, FinalWire will execute on the planned integration of the two companies' technologies and customers to ensure a smooth transition that will deliver immediate value for customers, partners and investors.

I am a big fan of my iPad. I use it for reading mostly, but it's nice to know that the thing can play some cool games and surf the web when I want it to as well. A normal eReader can't do that. The iPad is mostly aluminum on the outside today, but future versions may be made from high tech carbon fiber that is generally found in high-end sports cars and racing vehicles.

A patent application has surfaced that shows Apple is considering carbon fiber for the frame of the iPad. The app is called "Reinforced Device Housing" and outlines a method that Apple would use for creating the carbon fiber housing in the form we are already familiar with. The outer shell for the iPad would be made from "layered fiber-in-matrix type material, such as CFRP."

CFRP is also known as carbon fiber-reinforced polymer. I would love to see a carbon fiber iPad myself. I would hope if Apple did move to carbon fiber they would leave the weave exposed. On the other hand, they could opt to go with the ugly dry carbon fiber that looks like a matte black backside of fiberglass to me. The application also states that to prevent any tendency to crack the case would have an internal frame made from carbon fiber as well.

I would bet all the readers of TweakTown are familiar with 3DMark. This benchmark has been around for a very long time and is used in our reviews of video cards and computers here and all around the web. Anytime a new version of 3DMark comes out, we all get excited and sit up to find out more. We already know most of the details of the new benchmark, but we now have the final pieces of the puzzle.

Futuremark has now revealed that the final version of 3DMark 11 will ship on November 30, which is only a few weeks away. The real-time 3D graphics benchmark will sell for $19.95 for the Advanced Edition. Along with new screen shots showing off some of the really cool looking benchmarks, Future Mark has also posted a number of videos to YouTube that show off the new GPU tests.

The video and screens show off the before and after tessellations, volumetric lighting, and other effects in DirectX 11 games and capable video cards. A new trailer shows the Deep Sea and High Temple scenes in a bit more detail. Along with the $19.95, Advanced Edition of the software will be a free Basic Edition as well. The Advanced version will have a lot more features and benchmarks added in and will have no advertisements. You can Pre-Order right now.

I am sure lots of the gamers and PC enthusiasts out there remember when we moved from the AGP slot over to the first PCIe slot. The performance improvement coming from an AGP video card to the PCIe cars was very impressive. Later the PCIe 2.0 slot came out with about twice the bandwidth of the original and again brought video cards that had more performance. Now there is a new specification for PCIe that is ready to be downloaded by PCI-SIG members.

The new specification is PCIe 3.0 is backwards compatible with PCIe and PCIe 2.0 devices so your old cards will work with the new spec once it starts showing up on the market. The 3.0 specification has a new 128b/130b encoding scheme and has a data transfer rate of 8GT/s. The original PCIe spec has 2.5GT/s and the PCIe 2.0 spec has 5GT/s transfer rates.

According to the PCI-SIG the 3.0 spec has bandwidth of about 1GB/s in one direction on an x1 slot and can scale up to 32GB/s on an x16 slot commonly used for graphics cards. More bandwidth should mean that the video cards could offer gamers more performance for their favorite games. The new spec also has a number of other enhancements.

I'm not really meant to post gaming news, but games like Deus Ex and Portal 2 are too big to not post... so I hope you enjoy reading it here at TweakTown! Valve have delayed the hotly anticipated physics nut busting Portal 2 by 4 months, but... they've spun it into something funny.

The news was from a press release titled "VALVE ANNOUNCES MAKING GAMES IS HARD". Now, obviously they've hit a brick wall and can't get it out any quicker, and because Portal guns don't exist in real life (yet) they can't just shoot their way out of this one.

Supposedly, the delay is due after an exhaustive ethics-review-panel-supervised release date restructuring process, indicating the follow-up to the "ground-breaking title that earned over 30 Game of the Year awards despite missing its original ship date" would not be ready in time.

Thought your 3DMark score was good enough? Well, don't read on further dear reader.

ASUS are proud to announce a new world record in Futuremark's 3DMark Vantage. Featuring ASUS' innovative hardware designs and the skill of top overclocker NickShih, the combination of the ROG Rampage III Extreme motherboard, Intel's Flagship 980X processor and Voltage Tweaked GTX580 in SLI broke the 70K barrier with a score of 71,167**. This world record continues to show why ASUS is the 1 choice for overclockers and gamers those looking for the absolute best in performance.

Using things found around the house (may or may not be true) he overclocked the ASUS GTX580's from their stock 782MHz clock speeds to a pretty insane 1099MHz using LN2 (the stuff that ripped the T1000 into little pieces in Terminator 2).

A new and expanded WePC community launched today and is open to anyone with a passion for technology, especially ASUS products with Intel Inside®. Building on its mission to bridge innovation and technology with consumers' needs, the new WePC.com has more ways for fans to present their ideas, interact with community members and drive product development for two of the world's leading technology brands.

As one of the first crowdsourcing communities, WePC.com empowered members to play an integral role in the PC design process of a number of cutting-edge technologies, such as intuitive touchscreen interfaces and kid-friendly netbooks. Last year at CeBIT, ASUS initiated the industry's first dual-panel concept notebooks, making intuitive control possible. The community also supported the direction for the development of future pad devices.

"We've experienced firsthand the power of our customers' creativity in helping us build ground-breaking products that address their unique needs," said Christine Yang, WePC community manager. "Our expanded community platform creates a 'technology playground' that gives consumers the chance to spark conversations and ideas for a wider range of technology offerings. Here, they can connect with us and each other in an engaging way."

I have a few friends that always want to go somewhere and sing karaoke. One of my hard and fast rules of life is that I don't dance and I don't sing in public. I will humiliate myself with some Rock Band at my house, but singing in front of drunken people at the local Mexican food restaurant isn't my idea of fun. If you like to sing karaoke and want a portable system that will let you belt out your favorite songs and can be used for meetings and more Samson has a new product for you.

The new product is called the Expedition 40iw Portable Pa system. It has an integrated iPod dock and a wireless microphone. This is the first system to feature a wireless mic with an integrated rechargeable battery from Samson. The system can be used for karaoke, meetings, pool parties or any other task where you need to be heard by a group.

The dock has 40W of power that comes from a class D amp and it has a 6-inch woofer inside. The woofer has a titanium dome compression driver and it has plugs for additional mics and instruments to be connected. The XP40iw is in Best Buy locations right now for $299.99.